before the big bang

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Did time exist before the big bang?

I was watching a documentary the other day about the theory that our universe was created by the collision of two parallel universes in the 11th dimension. Or something along those lines.

Do you believe in the multi-verse theory?

There is no such thing as before time, because "before" is a concept of linear time. If you're outside of linear time then it doesn't apply.

If the universe was caused by some sort of brane collision, that just means that the whole of reality, is much more vast and complex than we can comprehend currently, and is larger than just the universe. You would still have to deal with the problem of the beginning of this greater reality, if linear time or causality even apply to it (if they don't then conceptualization will be extremely difficult).

I think people have a hard time grasping the concept of true nonexistance. But there are only two options to reality, either it is bounded, in which case we have to grasp that there is literally nothing beyond those boundaries, or it is not bounded, in which case we have to grasp that there are no limits to it all in any sense. Both concepts are alien to the way we think and our experience of reality on a personal level, but logically, it must be one of the two.

Hmm, interesting.

Personally, I'm more drawn to the "unboundedness" hypothesis, but both are rather bittersweet in the end. To think that we are just one of many many many universes somehow makes me feel rather lonely and insignificant. On the other hand, to imagine other nothingness is also quite frightening.

For an excellent lecture on the arrow of time see [youtube]http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEr-t17m2Fo[/youtube]

Sry effed the link no nrg to fix

In my opinion the universe was there before the big bang - just really small. I believe that the infinite heat and energy over time in its tiny ball the pressure increased to the point that BOOM the big bang happened. The laws of physics have existed before the big bang only in that little bubble as part of an infinite number of tiny and larger, expanding bubbles each with its set laws of physics.

I do love M-theory but it appears to fit a little too well.

Am also a keen believer in imaiginary time which, whilst dealing with the linear, one-way nature of time, also allows for an infinite number of possible versions of time to coexist simultaneously.

Before the big bang was a smaller bang, smaller than the plank length. Nothing smaller than the plank length makes sense in this universe, so it started in another universe where it did make sense.

The thing that bugs me though is that it's implied by general relativity that the universe was a singularity at time zero. That would imply a singularity had zero entropy but can radiate energy quite spectacularly in order to increase entropy to an non-zero value, thereby kicking off the big bang (otherwise we wouldn't exist right now), but that doesn't sound quite right.

This model below is pretty interesting. The author tries to reconcile: